Galaxy’s Largest Star is a Diamond

Trust me to find this! This ten billion trillion trillion carat monster would have an astronomical price tag if we could pluck it from the galaxy and bring it to earth. The world’s wealthiest people combined couldn’t afford this rock but in any case it’s clearly too big to wear, it certainly would not fit into your handbag were it the rock on your ring. “You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!” says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the gem.

A bit of science for you: The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon roughly 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus (a light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles). It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

The huge cosmic gem (technically known as BPM 37093) is actually a crystallized white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases. For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs were crystallized, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.

The diamond star completely outclasses the Golden Jubilee, the largest diamond on Earth. The large brown diamond of 755.5 carats (151 g) was discovered in the prolific blue ground of the Premier mine in South Africa in 1985; the diamond was cut to a weight of 545.67 carats (109.13 g):

From 1908 until 1985, Cullinan I, also known as the Great Star of Africa, had held the title of the largest diamond on earth. The 530 carat Star of Africa resides in the Crown Jewels of England. It was cut from the largest diamond ever found on Earth, a 3,100-carat gem:

I think a visit to the Tower of London is in order, maybe I’ll make it a group outing ;0) Everyone is invited, let’s go!

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